Erica, a 23-year-old humanoid robot developed by Osaka University professor Hiroshi Ishiguro, understands spoken Japanese not only with audio, but with body language - blinking, moving your head, raising your eyebrows, and more.

MIT engineers have devised a way to give more dexterity to simple robotic grippers using the environment as a helping hand. Their model predicts the force with which a robotic gripper must push against surrounding fixtures in order to adjust its grasp.

MIT recently demonstrated how SLAM can be used to improve object-recognition systems, which will be a vital component of future robots that have to manipulate the objects around them in arbitrary ways. The system uses SLAM information to augment existing object-recognition algorithms. Its performance should thus continue to improve as computer-vision researchers develop better recognition software, and roboticists develop better SLAM software.

A Google self-driving Lexus SUV was rear-ended in Mountain View, Calif. All passengers complained of whiplash, while Google's SUV had slight damage to its rear bumper, while the vehicle that struck it lost its front bumper.

“There’s this issue of trust in popular media where we see a lot of dystopian visions of a future with robots that have gone rogue or out of control. In this case, we’ve designed something that actually needs human empathy to accomplish its goals.”